Publications: ExchangeMonitor Morning Briefing

Dallas-based Jacobs Engineering Group recorded $3.2 billion in revenue for the quarter ended June 28, up $300 million from $2.9 billion during the same period a year ago. Earnings from operations dropped from $113 million, or $0.79 per diluted share a year earlier, to $89 million, $0.65 per diluted share, for the fiscal third quarter, […]

The Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) said Wednesday that it had voted to favorably report Air Force Gen. John Hyten’s nomination to become the next vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The committee voted 20-7 to report the U.S. Strategic Command commander’s nomination to the Senate for a floor vote. That followed a […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is still determining if problems with non-nuclear weapons components will prevent the B61-12 gravity bomb and W88 Alt 370 submarine-launched ballistic missile warhead from entering service with the Air Force and Navy on time, according to an annual agency report released Wednesday. The details are included in the agency’s 2020 […]

The prime contractor for the Y-12 National Security Complex is tightening its criticality safety program and increasing oversight and monitoring of that regime to prevent an accidental nuclear chain reaction, following a recent federal report that deemed the existing program at the main U.S. uranium processing site “inadequate.” After a month-long inspection last year of […]

Leidos Chairman and CEO Roger Krone predicted Tuesday the Energy Department could award a new contract for landlord services at the Hanford Site “within a couple of weeks.” There had been speculation it would be out this week, Krone said during the company’s quarterly earnings call, responding to a Wall Street analysts’ question on potential […]

An article in Wednesday’s edition of Weapons Complex Morning Briefing should have said Comprehensive Decommissioning International’s contract for decomissioning the Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station is worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

The U.S. Energy Department’s nuclear cleanup office on Wednesday awarded a trio of small-business contracts that together could be worth over $62 million. The largest of the deals, a potential $49.5 million indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity (ID/IQ) contract awarded to Oak Ridge, Tenn.-based BTP Services, is for technical support services throughout the Office of Environmental Management (EM) […]

Washington River Protection Solutions, the radioactive waste tank management contractor for the Energy Department’s Hanford Site in Washington state, is seeking a subcontractor to fabricate three drop-deck trailers for moving vitrified waste. The solicitation for the firm-fixed-price subcontract was posted July 22 in the federal procurement website www.fbo.gov. Bids are due by 9 a.m. PT on […]

The private company pushing the Donald Trump administration to fast-track sales of nuclear-power technology to Saudia Arabia is the latest incarnatation of a long-running entity that periodically pitches “impossible” nuclear projects, one executive wrote in an email published this week by the House Oversight Committee. The details are part of a second interim staff report […]

Entergy on Wednesday said it took a revenue hit from the closure of the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Massachusetts during the second quarter of 2019. Even so, the New Orleans-based power company’s Entergy Wholesale Commodities (EWC) business slimmed its losses in the latest earning period. Entergy Wholesale Commodities reported a $26 million loss, or […]

Holtec International has issued its first major contract for decommissioning of the Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station in New Jersey. The contract went, as anticipated, to Comprehensive Decommissioning International, a joint venture of Holtec and Canadian engineering firm SNC-Lavalin formed specifically for cleanup of retired nuclear power plants. The contract is worth hundreds of millions […]

The Sheep Fire, which burned more than 112,000 acres, is the largest blaze ever at the Energy Department’s Idaho National Laboratory, a spokeswoman confirmed Tuesday. It eclipsed the old record set by the Jefferson Fire, which in 2010 burned almost 109,000 acres, including 79,000 acres within the INL property, according to laboratory spokeswoman Sarah Neumann. […]

The advocacy group Nuclear Watch New Mexico wants New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) to renegotiate a 2016 consent order with the U.S. Department of Energy on cleanup of the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). The organization in June urged Grisham to have the New Mexico Environment Department revisit the deal reached with the […]

Debating nine of her rivals for the Democratic Party’s nomination for president on Tuesday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) made her case again for a U.S. policy against first use of nuclear weapons. “The United States is not going to use nuclear weapons preemptively, and we need to say so to the entire world. It reduces […]

The Senate’s top nuclear-weapon authorizer pumped Air Force Gen. John Hyten during a Tuesday confirmation hearing for ammunition to use in upcoming budget negotiations with House Democrats over spending levels for the ongoing modernization and maintenance of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. President Donald Trump in April nominated Hyten, commander of U.S. Strategic Command since 2016, […]

Senate leadership is eager to bring the House-passed Bipartisan Budget Act of 2019 to the floor this week before members leave for recess Aug. 2. But with multiple GOP members still reportedly undecided and eight Democrats out of town this week for presidential debates, it is still unclear whether the votes are there to pass […]

The White House is expected to submit two nominations in tandem for positions on the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, an informed source said this week. Senate Appropriations Committee staffer Christopher Hanson would be nominated to succeed Stephen Burns, who retired from the commission in April ahead of the end of his term on June 30. […]

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission on July 22 issued a regulatory exemption allowing Entergy Nuclear Operations to use money in the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station’s decommissioning trust fund for spent fuel management and site restorations activities. Entergy requested the exemption in November 2018 for the Massachusetts facility. On July 1, the NRC staff issued an environmental […]

The Department of Energy will probably deliver the first nuclear warhead for the next U.S. air-launched cruise missile a year later than the agency’s official fiscal 2025 forecast, according to an internal report. The department’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is “highly unlikely” to complete the Long-Range Standoff Weapon’s W80-4 warhead — a refurbished […]

Longtime Department of Energy manager Ed McGinnis has left the agency’s Office of Nuclear Energy to take a position at the White House, a source said Monday. McGinnis served as principal deputy assistant secretary for nuclear energy from May 2017, effectively leading the office until Rita Baranwal was sworn in as assistant secretary for nuclear […]

The Energy Communities Alliance says the U.S. Energy Department’s reinterpretation of the definition for high-level radioactive waste (HLW) could expedite disposal of such material now held at four nuclear cleanup sites. The ECA said it “can reasonably interpret that the waste streams to which this interpretation may apply” are the canisters of waste that have […]

The AECOM-led contractor in charge of liquid waste management at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site earned $28.57 million of a potential $30.28 million for its latest fee period. That represents better than 94% of the possible fee, according to the DOE performance scorecard. During the period from June 1, 2018, through March 31 […]

A power outage at the Nevada National Security Site’s Device Assembly Facility (DAF) interrupted some of the site’s nuclear stockpile stewardship operations for about two weeks this month, a spokesperson said. The outage happened July 1, after a series of mishaps in replacing the DAF’s uninterruptible power source — a backup power supply system that […]

An unidentified Energy Department nuclear facility needs to remedy shortcomings in its cybersecurity program, according to DOE’s Office of Inspector General. “Furthermore, we found that limited cybersecurity resources at the site impacted the ability of the site to ensure that all security controls were fully implemented,” the Energy Department IG said in the memo dated […]

NorthStar Group Services has requested approval from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to switch the means of transport to disposal of 200,000 gallons of contaminated wastewater from the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant. The company plans to move the wastewater primarily by rail to a disposal site in Idaho, rather by truck as previously OK’d […]